Vista Tutorial - Missing Hard Drive with Windows Vista Ultimate

I'm running a desktop system with Windows Vista Ultimate. I have encountered
a problem that I know is being experienced by other Vista users; I'm hoping
there is a workaround.

I have an internal 1 TB Hitachi hard drive (not the C drive). This desktop
system is only about six months old, and ever since I first acquired it I
found that this internal hard drive would go missing after putting Vista into
Sleep or Hibernation mode. Restarting the system would always enable Vista
to recognize the internal 1 TB hard drive again.

However, about two weeks ago this temporary fix wasn't working anymore --
restarting Vista didn't enable the 1 TB internal drive to be recognized.
It's been missing ever since.

And yet this drive is working properly according to Device Manager
(Including having the latest driver).

Doing a Google search has produced a few other threads on the web where
Vista users are also experiencing missing hard drives. Supposedly this
situation is to be directly addressed by Microsoft with the release of
Service Pack 1. Unfortunately, I need access to my internal hard drive now,
not weeks from now when Service Pack 1 is finally released.

Does anyone know of a workaround? Any solution whatsoever... outside of
reinstalling Vista?

Thanks!

Hello "husky86":
Sata drive cable connections have been known to come loose. You might
check and make sure both ends of the data cable are firmly attached. Also
check to see if the power cable is tightly connected. If that doesn't help I
would need to know if your board bios can see still see the drive. If it
does, then I would check in Disk Management to see if it shows there.
Sometimes you can see the drive in disk management but not just by clicking
"Computer". If it shows up in Disk Management but is not listed as active
and healthy you might check and see if you can see the drive in the Media
Center Window under recorder. I couldn't get Vista to see a drive I had
moved to my pc from another but it was visible in Media Center and I
temporarilly selected it to be the "Recording Drive". After a file was
established on that drive for recorded tv it began showing up in Computer and
the entire drive was then accessible. I then just went back into Media
Center and changed the recording drive back to the previous one and have had
no problems since. These suggestions may not be the solution but you could
give them a try......won't hurt anything at least! Good luck!

xiowan........in tucson


"husky86" wrote:

I am having the same problem. I have a second SATA HDD (D that I use for
storage and backup. When the computer wakes up from Sleep mode it is gone.
I go to system tools, and it is gone, device manager gone. The only way I
get it back is to re-boot. The bios finds it just fine, then I am ok. But I
can't put my computer to sleep or it will not be there when it wakes up.


"husky86" wrote:

xiowan:

I did check all the connections on the drives themselves; no problems.

I was able to get the drive to be recognized by the BIOS; there are no
problems with this aspect.

The drive is not recognized under Disk Management, however.

The drive is recognized under the Device Manager; right clicking on the
drive and going to Properties shows that the drive is "working properly."

The drive was not recognized by Windows Media Center, however.

So it's definitely a mixed bag to report.

Thanks for your input!

Uninstall it in device manager. Reboot.
They should appear in Disk Management.
Assign them a letter, if necessary.


"husky86" <husky86@xxxxxx> a écrit dans le message de
news:8C65155F-831A-4139-9AE9-016C615A0F2F@xxxxxx

cqui3:

Before uninstalling in Device Manager I wanted to check and make sure that
such an uninstall process isn't going to risk the loss of any data on the
hard drive...?

This is what we are trying to prevent at all costs, of course.

(Amazingly, the backup hard drive (an external 1 TB) and this internal hard
drive had problems during the same week (different problems, but it made both
of them unusable). So this is the only copy of this data that we have.)

Thanks!

During the past 2-3 months I have been waiting for the release of Service
Pack 1 in order that this ongoing problem may be solved. In other words, I
was told by my computer's manufacturer that Service Pack 1 would most
definitely solve this ongoing "missing hard drive" problem.

I was able to install Service Pack 1 today. The internal 1 TB Hitachi drive
still did not appear. Bringing up My Computer showed only the C drive (Disk
1) and the external 1 TB Lacie drive (Disk 0) .

Going back into Disk Management I found Disk 2 -- which I believe to be the
internal 1 TB drive -- to be unallocated. The following is a snapshot of the
present situation:

http://bp2.blogger.com/_-RQq-aijzY0/...Management.jpg

Because I know formal allocation of a drive requires formatting, I attempted
to allocate the drive and get it to be recognized by Vista without
reformatting the drive. (I assigned it its previous drive letter (X).)
However, this allocation attempt did not prove successful in that I'm
constantly told by the OS that I must format the drive before I can use it.

Does anyone have any suggestions on this present situation?

Again, this internal 1 Terabyte Drive has a lot of data on it that is
extremely valuable. I do not want to have to erase the drive if at all
possible.

Thanks!


"Hueyd" wrote:

Assign it a drive letter. That does not format the drive.

"husky86" <husky86@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3692FE7A-92B2-43FE-9760-55EF086F7F19@xxxxxx

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:48:01 -0700, husky86
<husky86@xxxxxx> wrote:
The drive space is allocated as a primary partition. The problem is
the file system isn't being recognized.Did you try running chkdsk in read-only mode to see what problems it
sees?
I would try running TestDisk to see what problems, if any, it sees.
Your best bet is using a file recovery program.

How is it possible to run chkdsk in read-only mode? I only know how to check
the disk under "normal" circumstances, I guess you could say.

Thanks!


"andy" wrote: